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Abstract
Demand for smart homes and smart devices has witnessed a consistent rise in the past decade. Home automation in residential buildings provides residents additional comfort of controlling their devices at the touch of a button. The concept of automated homes dates back to early 1930s but it has grown in consumer acceptance in this internet age courtesy of better sensors and seamless connectivity. Although smart devices and smart home technologies offer great convince to users, they tend to be expensive and are have to be first replaced with existing devices which requires high investments. There are alternatives to make existing appliances smart by adding adapters but these adapters too tend to be expensive.Proposed smart socket ecosystem uses an existing home power distribution network for communications. This power socket uses power lines to transfer control commands and measurement data. The hardware consists of a low cost microcontroller to measure and control power characteristics of electric appliances. A Raspberry Pi like credit card sized computer acts as a server and serves as a communication hub for the entire socket ecosystem. This system utilizes PHP and Python scripts along with network socket communications to transfer commands and data from between server and power socket. Each Socket transfers power characteristics periodically to the server. Smart power socket system is capable of detecting an appliance whenever it is connected by utilizing K-Nearest Neighbor classification and regression algorithm. An Android application designed in Android Studio acts as an interface to control and monitor the power socket. This application provides the user options to view power characteristics, schedule when to turn on connected appliance, learn and detect appliances connected to the socket.